A remarkable gallery of artworks, presented on big glossy white pages, all in original line art, charcoal and pencil drawings, the books showcases the work of contemporary combat artists and illustrators from the Great War era. It is a vivid graphic record of life and death on the high seas from the outbreak of the war just prior to the Battle of Jutland as reported to contemporary audiences while the events were still unfolding. There is a heart wrenchingly tragic image of rescue work after the disappearance of the Lusitania, with drowning and drowned casualties being hauled from the water into small rescue boats by sailors; a Zeppelin holding up a merchant vessel in the North Sea in a dramatic image, the sinking of the Turkish battleship Messudiyeh by submarine B11, a captioned diagram of the enemy destroyer sank at the mouth of the Ems River, a pen and ink portrait of the First Lord (Churchill with his two highest executive Officers), the famous exploit of Commander Cecil H. Fox who sent four German destroyers to the bottom, his men standing alongside their huge guns, watching the vessels flounder; upturned vessels and propellers, Britain's deadly mosquitos of the ocean, throwing overboard all inflammable luxuries when a battleship is cleared for action, mine layers at work and an amazing drawing giving a splendid idea of the hugeness of provisioning a warship with 120lbs of cake, six cases of sardines, 36 cooked hams and 270 dozen fresh eggs among the cargo. Here is a remarkable double page spread of the painting Gassed by John Singer Sargeant with many blinded casualties and 1st Artist Rifles by Paul Nash. Hundreds of images, 128 page softback, 8" x 10".

Nothing short of heroic in their daring and discoveries, Frédéric Cailliaud's personal narratives of travels far up the Nile and of the arts and crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians and Ethiopians are exquisitely illustrated with art on par with those in Description de L'Egypte. The travel accounts, drawings and collections he created were an important contribution to the birth of the new scientific discipline of Egyptology in the first half of the 19th century. But one of Cailliaud's major works on the arts and crafts of Ancient Egypt was never published. Here for the first time here, his exquisite colour plates are presented alongside a translation of his original French text with explanatory material to put the work in context. Arriving in Egypt in 1815, Cailliaud embarked upon a series of explorations that included the rediscovery of the Roman emerald mines at Mount Zabora and the ancient routes to the Red Sea, and expeditions in the Eastern and Western Deserts and the land we know today as Ethiopia. He made copious notes on the flora and fauna, people and antiquities he saw, and took a collection of over 2,000 objects back to France (of course today this would be the subject of great controversy). His beautifully rendered watercolours of scenes on Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples (viewed before Champollion's deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs), show animated scenes of ancient daily life like spinning and weavers, sculptors, a boat with rowers, a funerary barque, constructing a temple, statuettes and amulets and painted ceilings in glorious colour, royal chairs and benches and figures painted on a mummy case. He draws parallels to the 19th century activities he observed around him in a work which appeals to historians, art historians and Egyptologists of all levels. With 33 maps and tomb plans and 66 of Cailliaud's Plates. Colour. 288 pages published by the American University in Cairo Press, 28.7 x 20.8cm.

Born in Edo present day Tokyo in 1752, Bosai was not just a painter poet but also a calligrapher and Confucian scholar and his 'Mountains of the Heart' is widely acknowledged as one of the finest Japanese woodblock books. Scenes include Smoke at the Beach, Poetic Ideas in the Summer Mountains and Pines Chant in a Thousand Valleys. Poet, free spirit and renowned master of ehon (art-book) tradition, the book explores Japan's landscape through the eyes of a renowned artist, and provides new perspectives on a rare painting collection. Ehon recorded Japanese life, culture and geography for hundreds of years, depicting homes lost in the mists of immense foothills, or small figures wandering through rolling valleys, houses and trees, waterfalls and willows. Bosai's collection elegantly portrays the relationship between man and his environment, inspiring reverence for nature's quiet power imbued with a sense of the bucolic tranquillity that the artist so lovingly immortalised with his rich and spontaneous style. His love of life is apparent in every beautiful brush stroke, faithfully reproduced in facsimile in this invaluable study of a landmark masterpiece. A glamorous 117 page George Braziller publication with 22 colour spreads and 22 black and white illustrations, 19.6 x 26.7cm.

A deluxe album of 36 colour prints each showing a poet on the left and one of her poems on the right with a frontispiece by Hokusai designed by Hosoda (Eishi) 1756-1829. The volume explores the lives and works of a group of 36 poets and novelists who flourished in the Imperial Court of Japan from the 9th through to the 13th centuries. Aristocratic women of the medieval Japanese court took up waka poetry as their literary vehicle. The poems were circulated at court and assembled in carefully structured anthologies which were copied and studied, even memorised, as models of the finest literature. A poetry competition had developed from games played among court women, and emerged as a significant literary and social structure. The poems were reproduced in calligraphy in 1797 by 36 girls between the ages of six and 15 and we are struck by these gorgeous colourful illustrations with a marginalia noting the name, address and age of the child responsible. For example the poem by Ukon was copied by Toyota Mine, age 6, and the poem by Michitsuna no haha was brushed by the girl's 10 year old sister, Toyota Ito. The children were all pupils of a calligraphy school who sponsored the publication, demonstrating the skill of the woodblock carvers who would have cleaned up any rough spots and showing the skills in drawing kana, the elements of Japanese syllabic script. Over the centuries selected representative examples were illustrated with imaginary portraits of the poets and such handscrolls and books were not only made as artistic works, but as instructional guides for new generations of poets. A student of Utamaro, here we have a reproduction of one such album by Eishi where portraits of poets presented in elegant court dress are paired with one of their most famous poems. Large print text and huge size softback, colour artworks throughout. 192pp, 20.3 x 26cm and a quality George Braziller rare 1991 imported publication from New York.

Depicting the grim realities of the four year struggle for the Ypres salient, this powerful collection showcases work of the contemporary combat artists and illustrators from the Great War era. Included here are the works of serious artists, propagandists, illustrators and humourists, and the result is a stunning and vivid graphic record of life and death as reported to contemporary audiences when events were still unfolding. They provided a highly accurate visual record of the fleeting moments which the bulky cameras could not reproduce and a contemporary record of hand-to-hand fighting, trench raids, aerial dogfights, sea battles, desperate last stands, night actions and cavalry charges. Images show Irish fusiliers attacking with the bayonet, they go into prayer before action and a crowded railway platform with a wounded soldier and stretcher bearers in a Bruce Bairnsfather drawing has the caption 'The unquenchable cheerfulness of the British soldier.' 128 large pages, 24 x 18.5cm, paperback. Hundreds of illus.

An epic tour through cosmic scale by the award winning astrobiologist drawing on cutting-edge science. Together with acclaimed artist Ron Miller, they begin at the limits of the observable universe, a scale spanning 10 to 27 meters, about 93 billion light-years. They end in the subatomic realm, at 10 to 35 meters, where the fabric of space-time itself confounds all known rules of physics. In between there are galaxies, stars and planets, oceans and continents, plants and animals, microorganisms, atoms, black holes, alien lifeforms, walking a rocky globe where maybe a human will take us to the next level of insight. There is a diagram of brains of the world built out of neurons, of individual cells, a meteorological plane venturing across the eyewall of the hurricane, time machine depictions, three different interpretations of quantum mechanics, Pluto's sky with its moon Charon, and the Sun a dim star more than 4.4 billion km away. The over 100 original illustrations are utterly captivating and the infographics will captivate explorers of every age. Packed with bleeding-edge facts, vivid prose and sumptuous illustrations in a huge dose of dazzle from the fringes of the visible universe to the heart of the atom. 21 x 24.4cm, 224pp, colour.

Oceans, rivers, forests, caves, deserts, skies and soil are home to extraordinary species from the tiny dragon-like olm to the colossal sequoia tree. They have survived for hundreds of thousands of years by adapting to unique environments, but their future remains far from certain. Their story is our story too. This book is a stunning homage to the planet's most mysterious, bizarre and wondrous creatures and plants, a love letter to life on Earth and an urgent summons to protect what is precious and lovely in our world. Exquisitely illustrated with beautiful full page, double page and other artworks in colour throughout, we meet the Amur tiger, Chinese crested tern, Kakapo, Sunda pangolin, dusky gopher frog, Andean condor, Javan rhinoceros, Ethiopian wolf and African grey parrot, all vanishing species that are diminished by wildlife trading, hunting or destruction of habitat. In the insect world we meet the pine hoverfly, dung beetles, lesser long-nosed bat, European turtledove and Iberian lynx and rust lemur, all species that grow out of soil, nourish it, or have been made rare by our use of land. Then there are species that live in the deep ocean, in coral reefs, mangroves and some of the species affected by Australian bush fires. The book is organised by air, water, soil and homo sapiens, and each beautiful drawing has been engraved, printed and coloured by hand by the author Beatrice Forshall in this beautiful Bloomsbury publication. 256 pages, 18.5 x 27cm.
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Published in association with the National Gallery and Yale University Press following an exhibition in late 2017, Bibliophile has discovered this rare exhibition catalogue. The Burrell Collection in Glasgow houses more than 20 paintings, pastels, and drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917) that include his most recognisable motifs - ballet dancers, bathers, jockeys and women at work. Together with a selection of the National Gallery's oils and pastels, they represent every stage of Degas's career. The authors show how the immediacy of these works is enhanced by the artist's energetic technique. These are not so much spontaneous sketches as daring experiments in form and colour. Harriet Stratis explains the artist's innovative use of pastels. Julien Domercq sets the pictures in the context of Degas's career and the ongoing assessment of his art. Vivien Hamilton examines the life and milieu of Degas's contemporary Sir William Burrell, the wealthy Scottish shipping magnate and philanthropist, for whom forming this impressive collection of works was an unusual foray into contemporary art. The catalogue is organised by the following headings: Modern Life, Dancers, Privacy Observed with such beautiful examples as the female nude on her side entitled After the Bath and another the famous Combing the Hair. Beautifully illustrated large size with good quality colour reproductions. 112pp, 23.6 x 27.7cm.

The Book of Symbols combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with representative images from all parts of the world and all eras of history. The highly readable texts and almost 800 beautiful full-colour images come together in a unique way to convey hidden dimensions of meaning. Each of the 350 essays examines a given symbol's psychic background and how it evokes psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image-all these factors are taken into consideration. Authored by writers from the fields of psychology, religion, art, literature, and comparative myth, the essays flow into each other in ways that mirror the psyche's unexpected convergences. The Book of Symbols illuminates how to move from the visual experience of a symbolic image in art, religion, life, or dreams, to directly experiencing its personal and psychological resonance. 6½" x 9½", 810 pages.

A bird-monster devouring sinners, naked bodies in tantric contortions, a pair of ears brandishing a sharpened blade: with just 20 paintings and nine drawings to his name, Netherlandish visionary Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) secured his place as a pillar of art history. To this day, the painter par excellence of hell and its demons continues to puzzle and enthral scholars, artists, designers, and musicians alike. Based on the best-selling XXL edition, which saw Taschen commission new and exclusive photography of details and recently restored works, this large-scale monograph presents Bosch's complete oeuvre. Texts from art historian and Bosch expert Stefan Fischer dissect the many compelling elements that populate each scene, from hybrid creatures of man and beast to Bosch's pictorial use of proverbs and idioms. By tying together the elusive threads of his oeuvre into one exhaustive overview, this book reveals just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential. Features impeccable full-page reproductions celebrating the artist's staggering compositional scope, enlarged details unveiling the most intricate and bizarre scenes as much as the unsuspected technical minutiae, from subtle brush-strokes to the grain of the canvas and a fold-out spread drawn from the legendary Last Judgement. A special chapter focusses on Bosch's most famous work, the mesmerizing and terrifying triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. Colour. Hardcover with fold-out, 25 x 34 cm, a weighty 3 kg, 300 pages.